Katie Segal is a Climate & Ocean Research Fellow at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE). Her past work has focused on climate and energy policy and she is especially interested in U.S. state-level policy. Prior to joining the CLEE team, Katie worked at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science & International Affairs as a research assistant for the Arctic Initiative, focusing on environmental issues facing the changing Arctic region.

Katie spent four years with ICF as a research assistant and then analyst with the Regulatory, Economics, Environment & Energy Team. At ICF, Katie conducted analysis and provided regulatory development support on behalf of 30+ state and federal government agencies on issues such as electric vehicles, renewable energy, and resilience planning. Katie holds a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School, where she was also a Bacon Environmental Leadership Fellow, and a B.S. from Tufts University in Biology, Environmental Studies, and Political Science. During graduate school, Katie spent a summer working with the United States Climate Alliance. Her master’s thesis project focused on offshore wind development. She is originally from Southern California.

Beth Kent is an Emmett/Frankel Fellow in Environmental Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law for 2020-2022. She was previously the Policy and Legal Fellow at the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust.

Kent received her B.S. with Honors in Society and Environment and High Distinction in the College of Natural Resources from UC Berkeley. She earned her J.D. from UCLA School of Law with a specialization in Public Interest Law & Policy from the Epstein Program. Kent was a summer law clerk at Earthjustice and the California Office of the Attorney General in the Land Law Section and a legal extern at NRDC.

Heather Lewis is a Clinical Teaching Fellow in UC Berkeley’s Environmental Law Clinic. Heather came to the Clinic from Earthjustice’s California office, where she litigated public interest environmental cases to protect communities from fossil fuel infrastructure development and preserve California’s endangered species and wild places. Prior to joining Earthjustice, Heather was a staff attorney at ChangeLab Solutions, a public health law and policy organization, where she drafted model legislation, guidance documents, and provided trainings to help public health advocates create healthier built environments through law and policy. Before that, she was a legal fellow at Communities for a Better Environment, where she litigated environmental justice cases and provided legal support for community campaigns in the Bay Area and Southern California.

Heather received her J.D. from NYU School of Law, and her B.A. in Environmental Studies from the University of Chicago.

Autumn Bordner is a Research Fellow in ocean law and policy at CLEE and the Law of the Sea Institute. Her work focuses on both international and domestic ocean issues, including California offshore wind development and improving the governance regime for marine scientific research under the U.N. Convention for the Law of the Sea.

Dr. Dai has played a significant role leading California’s collaboration with China on climate, energy and environment. She was appointed by Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr as Special Advisor on China. Under Brown, Dr. Dai chaired the state’s China Interagency Working Group, and acted as the state’s liaison on its critical economic and environmental initiatives on China. Previously, Dr. Dai served as senior advisor at California Environmental Protection Agency and California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, advising on the state’s international policy and global climate partnership. In 2017, she organized Governor Brown’s trip, which resulted in a successful meeting with President Xi Jinping and the commitment to establish the California-China Climate Institute.

Dr. Dai is a graduate of Berkeley Law, University of California, and holds a doctoral degree on Environmental Policy and Economics from State University of New York. Her research has been focused on market mechanisms for climate change mitigation, energy efficiency and innovations.

Patrick Heller is an advisor at NRGI and a senior visiting fellow at the Center on Law, Energy and Environment (CLEE) at the University of California, Berkeley. He has worked on legal reform and governance initiatives in the developing world for more than 15 years for organizations including USAID, the U.S. State Department, the Asian Development Bank, Creative Associates International and The International Center for Transitional Justice.

Patrick’s work focuses on the governance of state-owned oil and mining companies and the analysis of extractive industry institutions, contracts and legislation. He contributes extensively to NRGI’s programs of technical assistance to governments and civil society organizations throughout the world, and to NRGI’s capacity development efforts. He has facilitated courses on oil, gas and mining legal frameworks with partner institutions including the University of Oxford (U.K.), Columbia University (U.S.), Gadjah Mada University (Indonesia), the Catholic University of Central Africa (Cameroon) and Externado University (Colombia).

At CLEE, Patrick is researching pathways to sustainability for fossil fuel-producing countries, including tools for governments to better account for uncertainties from climate change as they make long-term economic plans. He is also examining methodologies for incorporating measurements of environmental risks into decisions about whether to proceed with new oil or mining projects.

He holds a law degree from Stanford University and a master’s in international relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.